HEALTH CHECK

A system monitor lets you query the system’s current health state. If you are unhappy with the spartan Top tool, try one of these easy alternatives.

Linux supports many sophisticated server monitoring tools that analyze a server’s health state, log the results, and print colorful graphs and reports. But if you are just interested in finding out why the hard disk LED on your desktop is flashing wildly, what you really need is a simple, at-a-glance overview of the system status. A quick look at the system status will show you which applications are hogging memory or which processes are hogging the CPU.

The KDE and Gnome desktop environments each have on-board tools for this task: Ctrl+Esc on KDE launches the KDE system monitor, KSysguard. Gnome has the Gnome System Monitor for the same task. The KDE application, in particular, requires a significant amount of system resources. Because users typically need a monitor to find out why a machine is overloaded, this seriously affects the tool’s usability.

At some point, any service that can't run fast enough will be put on the web. So, why not do this for remote login? With a little JavaScript and CSS wizardry, a software tool called "Shell In A Box" sends a shell to the browser.

Administrators often assume that if all nodes are functioning, the system is fine. However, a common problem is poor or unexpected application performance. In this case, you need a simple tool to help you understand what's happening on the nodes: nmon.